• We'll not use hotfix branches
• We'll not use development/integration branches (for now -> see table under OpenIssues)

Master

• Rule: revert immediately as soon as it fails
• no direct commits except minor enhancement (fixing typos & formatting etc.) 
  
  • make sure to inform in M5 Review chat

Feature branches

• on central repo
• remove them after the final merge
• list of feature branches 
  
  • --> things we are actively working on or are waiting
• frequently merge from master to feature branches to reduce last-minute conflicts

Maintenance

• no changes
• no hot fix branches (for the moment)

Merging (feature-branch -> master)

• only after review 
• we use  git merge --no-ff instead
  
  • no fastforward - avoids losing information about the historical existence of a feature branch + groups together all commits of a feature
    

(other option would be git merge --squash when merging from feature branch to master -> one consolidated commit with meaningful message for a feature)

Not using one of the above will result in situations where it might be very hard to figure out what commit's belong together (e.g. really bad if u have to revert a feature)

Links

By the way: feature branching vs. continuous integration has heavily been debated - mainly because of Martin Fowler's vote to not go for feature branches. Here's a bunch of links around it:

• a successful git branching model (main influence for our approach)
• a tidy git workflow (similar to above)
• continues delivery (Martin Fowler et al. voting to not go for feature branches)
• minutes from our first meeting